2 weeks ago
Black diamonds are what they utilized to excavation up from nan Fife coalfields. The Blue Brazil is nan improbable nickname of Cowdenbeath shot club. Together, in nan 1993 book by Ron Ferguson, they correspond nan bittersweet hopes of a downtrodden town: nan ember that brought work, fatal accidents and unemployment; nan squad that brought moments of joyousness and a litany of loss. You would telephone it a triumph of nan underdog, isolated from this squad ne'er triumphs.
“Some things are much important than winning,” is nan catchphrase of nan ex-miner and diehard Cowdenbeath instrumentality (Barrie Hunter) who haunts this warm-hearted adjustment by Gary McNair, first aired as an audio play successful 2021. More important, nan playwright would argue, is simply a consciousness of community, of shared experience, of learning not to beryllium defeated by pit closures, occupation losses, relegation and death. It is astir “how to suffer and support going pinch hope”.
That is simply a difficult instruction to study for nan fan’s daughter, Sally Venters McAlpine (named successful honour of 1930s wrong guardant Alex Venters), an aspiring lawyer who has escaped a location municipality that, for her, symbolises only defeat. After her father’s decease astatine 53 from achromatic lung disease, a consequence of inhaling ember dust, she feels duty-bound to fulfil his last wish: that she scatter his ashes astatine Central Park stadium nan adjacent clip nan Blue Brazil win.
Surely that cannot beryllium long, she thinks, not banking connected nan title from Clydebank, Dunfermline Athletic, Meadowbank Thistle and nan rest. As Ricky Ross sings from down nan soft successful his group of reflective folk-blues songs: “It’s going to beryllium a long, agelong season.”
Long, yes, but successful James Brining’s gentle, minor-key production, Dawn Steele ne'er makes it look so. In what amounts to a speech pinch occasional interventions from a wise and placatory Hunter, she is an fantabulous narrator of her ain tale, a female some repelled and attracted by nan spot she grew up. As nan defeats heap up, she charts Sally’s modulation from outsider to insider pinch subtlety and grace. It is not a play of expansive emotions – nan undulations are slight, nan stakes debased – but of quiet, individual victories.
